On the Day Before
Bartlet vetoes (1) the Republicans' effort to repeal the estate tax (2), and the staff works to get enough votes to prevent an override. Bartlet and Leo also deal with the killing of U.S. citizens in Israel, the latest threat to the Israel peace process (3). CJ deals with a clueless reporter.
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Presidential veto (last updated November 4, 2001) (back to top)
Under Article I, Section 7 of the constitution, the President of the United States has the authority to veto legislation passed by Congress. This power can prevent the passage of legislation opposed by the President, and the threat of a veto can shape legislation long before it reaches his desk for his signature or veto.
Once passed by both houses of Congress, a bill is presented to the President of the United States for signing. He has 10 days from presentation to sign it into law or to return it with objections to Congress for reconsideration; if he does not act on the bill within 10 days, then it becomes law as if he had signed it unless Congress has already adjourned.
There are two types of vetoes embedded in this process. First, the regular veto occurs when the President returns legislation to Congress; this is a qualified negative veto, which Congress can override by a two-thirds vote of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Second, the pocket veto occurs when Congress adjourns before the 10 days are up; this is an absolute veto which Congress cannot override, and Congress must re-legislate the bill all over again in the next session.
Use of both kinds of veto power has become more common over the course of the presidency. The first presidents used it sparingly and only on their belief that the legislation before them was unconstitutional: George Washington used it just twice during his two terms in office, and Andrew Jackson, the seventh president, issued 12 vetoes (5 regular, 7 pocket) during his two terms, more than all of his predecessors combined. By contrast, every president in the 20th century issued an average of several vetoes a year over the course of his tenure in office.
Presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Grover Cleveland, and Harry S. Truman vetoed the most legislation, but many of these vetoes were of private bills generally enacted in relation to war-related pension and other claims. Looking only at public bills, FDR and Cleveland are still the most prolific with a veto, with FDR vetoing 138 public bills during his three terms, and Cleveland a total of 102 bills during his two non-consecutive terms. Truman's count falls to 75 public-bill vetoes while he finished FDR's term and then served his own.
Congress has overridden only a handful of regular vetoes from Washington to Clinton, overriding about 7.1 percent of the regular vetoes during this period. The presidents with the highest percentage of vetoes overridden are Franklin Pierce (5 out of his 9 vetoes overridden) and Andrew Johnson (15 of his 21 vetoes overridden), with Ford (12 of his 48), Nixon (7 of his 26) and Wilson (6 of his 33) in the second tier.
As for recent presidents:
- Jimmy Carter: 31 total vetoes (13 regular, 18 pocket). Two of his 13 regular vetoes were overridden (6 percent).
- Ronald Reagan: 78 total vetoes (39 regular, 39 pocket). Nine of his 39 regular vetoes were overridden (12 percent).
- George Bush: 44 total vetoes (29 regular, 15 pocket; he also tried to pocket veto two bills, but these bills were considered enacted into law and are not generally counted as pocket vetoes). One of his 29 regular vetoes was overridden (2 percent).
- Bill Clinton: 38 (37 regular, 1 pocket). Two of his 37 regular vetoes were overridden (5 percent).
In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan publicly campaigned for an item veto (sometimes known as a line-item veto) that would give the president power to strike certain parts of legislation presented to him; most state governors have long had such power. In 1996, Congress enacted legislation giving the president this item-veto power for certain federal spending and tax bills, but the United States Supreme Court held that such power was an unconstitutional violation of the separation of powers since it allowed the president to enact a "different law" from that passed by Congress. An item veto, the Court said, was possible only with a constitutional amendment.
Sources: Robert J. Spitzer, The Presidential Veto: Touchstone of the American Presidency (State University of New York Press, 1988). Richard A. Watson, Presidential Vetoes and Public Policy (University Press of Kansas, 1993). The Clerk of the House of Representatives has a listing of vetoes, available on-line here. Clinton v. New York, No. 97-1374, United States Supreme Court (1998).
Estate Tax (last updated 8/12/01) (back to top)
The federal estate tax, sometimes known as a "death tax" by its critics, taxes the estates of the wealthiest Americans upon their deaths. Under pre-2001 law, it affected about 2 percent of Americans who died each year and it accounted for about $35 billion in revenues (as the chart below shows, it accounts for less than 2 percent of annual government revenue). Under Bush's tax cuts signed into law in June 2001, estate tax rates will be reduced and more Americans exempt from coverage until the tax is fully repealed in 2010. The resulting loss of about $300 billion in revenue makes up a significant component of Bush's overall tax-cut package, which has been estimated at around $1.35 trillion.
Bush's overall tax-cut package, which has been estimated at around $1.35 trillion.
Estate taxes currently are assessed on the net worth of an individual at death, also counting gifts made before death. Under pre-2001 tax law, there was no tax on the first $675,000 of an individual's net worth (this exempted amount was to rise to $1 million by 2006). Fewer than 48,000 Americans were thus covered under the tax, about 2 percent of annual deaths. Farms and family businesses made up a small percentage of those subject to the tax, but had special protections such as a higher exemption threshold.
Above the exemption threshold, estates were taxed under pre-2001 tax law at rates beginning at 37 percent and rising to 55 percent. This tax has resulted in about $35 billion annually in tax revenue, a small figure when compared to income tax revenues of about $1 trillion and corporate profit tax revenues of about $200 billion, but over the course of the next decade, a large component of Bush's overall tax cut.
The debate over the estate tax resulted in some unusual alliances. In February 2001, a group of wealthy Americans including Warren Buffett, George Soros, and Bill Gates' father publicly came out in favor of retaining the estate tax. In an ad that ran in the New York Times and other papers that month, the millionaires argued that "repealing the estate tax would enrich the heirs of America's millionaires and billionaires while hurting families who struggle to make ends meet." Many of these millionaires contribute to charities which are dependent on the giftgiving that the estate tax is said to encourage.
Nonetheless, the House and Senate passed a package of tax cuts including an estate-tax cut on May 26, 2001. The House vote was 240-154 with 28 Democrats and an independent joining all Republicans. The Senate vote was 58-33 with 12 Democrats joining 46 Republicans; two Republican senators, John McCain and Lincoln Chaffee, voted against the bill. President George W. Bush signed the bill into law on June 7, 2001.
Under the new tax law, the estate tax exemption is raised to $1 million in 2002, four years earlier than originally planned, and continues to rise to $3.5 million by 2009. Rates on those estates still covered are reduced beginning in 2002. As currently planned, the estate tax is to be fully repealed by 2010.
Beyond the estate tax, other tax cuts are also phased in gradually over the next decade and thus could be repealed or expanded by the time they become effective; lower income tax rates do not become fully implemented until 2006, new benefits for married couples not until 2008, and the doubling of the tax credit for children not until 2010. All tax cuts are to expire on December 31, 2010, returning US tax laws to what they were on June 6, 2001, unless renewed.
For more on the federal budget, go here.
Sources: Paul Krugman, Fuzzy Math: the essential guide to the Bush tax plan (W.W. Norton & Company, 2001). William Gale and Joel Slemrod, Resurrecting the Estate Tax (Brookings Institution, June 2000). David E. Rosenbaum, Subject to review: Even as President signs tax cut measure, Democrats and GOP talk of revisions, New York Times, June 8, 2001. Citizens for Tax Justice, available online here.
Israel-Palestinians Peace Process (last updated November 16, 2001) (back to top)
For more than 50 years, the state of Israel has existed in uneasy tension with its Arab neighbors and with the Palestinians who originally occupied some of the same territory. This tension has erupted into wars such as the Six Days War and into violent uprisings (aka intifadas) such as the one that began in September 2000 and continues into the close of 2001.
The 1990s, nonetheless, saw the beginning of a peace process that had as its goal the transfer of authority over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip from Israel occupation to Palestinian self-government. In the wake of the Gulf War, Israel met with Palestinian and other Arab leaders in the Madrid Conference and began talks. After a round of talks in Oslo, Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) signed a joint Declaration of Principles on September 13, 1993. That declaration called for a five-year transition period in which Israel would gradually withdraw its troops from major Palestinian centers and Palestinians would gradually govern themselves.
Several divisive issues, such as the status of Jerusalem and Jewish settlements in areas such as the West Bank and the Gaza strip, were officially set aside for a second stage of negotiations to begin no later than 1996.
Since 1993, negotiations have moved on two separate tracks, one towards Palestinian self-government as an interim step, and another towards a permanent adjustment. The interim track culminated with the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat signed on September 28, 1995. This agreement was implemented in stages over the next few years.
However, other issues continued to go unresolved. First, the status of Jerusalem, which both Israel and the Palestinians want for their capital city, was left for future negotiations. Second, though Israel stopped creating wholly new settlements in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, it continued to support the growth of existing settlements; this policy, which the United States has opposed continuously at least since the Carter administration, has been a particularly bad grievance to the Palestinians. On the other hand, Israel has complained that the Palestinians have been slow to implement their obligations under the Interim Agreement, including policing their own radicals.
Israel and the Palestinians began negotiating these issues in May 1996 and periodically since then, but without much success. One difficulty has been the frequent turnover in power from the Labor Party to the Likud Party. The Labor Party led by Yitzhak Rabin won national elections in 1992, Likud under Binyamin Netanyahu won in May 1996, and Labor took power again with Ehud Barak in 1999. Barak himself was replaced by Ariel Sharon in February 2001. Labor is generally more secular and favors giving land for peace to the Palestinians; Likud is more religious and conservative, and has greater concerns about security.
In September 2000, a new wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence broke out that seems to have set back the entire peace process. Events began with the September 28, 2000 visit of Israeli Parliament member Ariel Sharon (now the country's prime minister) to the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Palestinians protested the visit the next day, and Israeli police reacted with violence to disperse the demonstrations, killing four and injuring hundreds. Violence then continued and escalated through the end of 2000 and into 2001, resulting in hundreds of deaths, mostly Palestinians.
The Sharm el-Sheikh Fact Finding Committee, organized by the United States and chaired by former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, later reported that there was no evidence that Sharon's visit had been anything more than "an internal political act," or that the Palestinians had any deliberate plan to incite violence. On the other hand, the committee found, the violence resulted because "each side assumed the worst about the other and acted accordingly."
The Committee had plenty of criticism for both sides. It criticized Israel's use of military force, noting that Israel needed to differentiate better between terrorism and protests, and noting that two-thirds of the alleged "attacks" by Palestinians against Israelis did not involve firearms or explosives. The Committee also criticizes Israel's settlement policy for instigating Palestinian ire. At the same time, the Committee found that the PLO needed to make more efforts to enforce a complete stop of violence and prevent anti-Israeli terrorism.
For more on developments in Israel and with the Palestinians, go here.
Sources Report of the Sharm el-Sheikh Fact Finding Committee, April 30, 2001. The United States Department of State maintains a section on the Middle East, available here. The United States Embassy in Israel has collected historical documents (available here) and an ongoing collection of developments (available here).
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